


a soul dyed with the colour of thought(s of you)

by jeannedarc



Category: VIXX
Genre: M/M, fluffy garbage, hakyeon is like mentioned, pretentious use of colour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 06:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14910179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: "i want not to touch the artwork."





	a soul dyed with the colour of thought(s of you)

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! it has been a moment, please do not crucify me or something  
> i haven't even Wanted to write anything in like two months and therefore have not   
> then wrote this in like an hour listening to soul music and thinking about a teeny prompt i found written in a journal  
> thanks to riley for beta-ing on the fly and being an awesome supportive friend (as always)

Museums are a funny thing.

See, there’s this...emptiness to it. When Hongbin moves down the hall, one piece to the next, his footsteps seem louder, his only company being that of the portraits that occasionally stare him down. It’s a Tuesday morning, and he’s doing a little research for some art of his own, trying to find an inspiration the likes of which he simply doesn’t get from his nights of gaming and hardcore procrastinating (and, yes, the occasional jerk-off session, recently turned mutual jerk-off session with quite possibly the most beautiful man in the world). He doesn’t believe in suffering for his art, after all, and depression doesn’t make art the way that living life does, not by a long shot.

Right now, though, he’s fairly certain he’s going to end up suffering one way or another. Nothing here is speaking to him, though he _has_ made several attempts and ended up looking like the weirdo who talks to paintings when he thinks no one else is watching.

Wonsik has caught him twice already. Thank God Wonsik’s shift on this wing is over, and Hongbin can fail at observing the artwork of others in peace, without his best friend snickering behind his back, somewhere behind a sculpture. Privately, Hongbin hopes Wonsik chokes on whatever shit sandwich from the shit deli in the museum he decides to indulge in today. He loves his best friend. He does _not_ love being mocked for his process, however strange it might be.

Begrudgingly, Hongbin continues his trudge of the museum halls. The walls and floors are ivory, impenetrable marble, and the sheer volume of them, the height at which they stand, the sound they make beneath his timid footsteps is enough to utterly humble him. Not that he’s without humility in the first place. He is an artist, but he knows that, as he is right now, he doesn’t have it in him to have work worthy of making its home here. 

The lights are low, protecting the paintings from natural damage, and he would be grateful to see a dust mote pass through their golden glow, but the place is almost clinically well-kept; it hardly has a soul. He hasn’t seen a ray of sunlight in several hours which, truth be told, isn’t particularly different from what he’s been doing at home. 

Maybe this was a mistake. Not that he’ll admit it. He’ll keep trying until he feels like screaming. Perhaps he will scream, the sound chartreuse, a frustration that does not have words. He is the only one dumb enough to come to a stuffy private collection on a Tuesday when all the kids are still in school, after all.

He is keenly aware that he is alone; the hair at his nape stands on end, and he drags a hand over it, heaving a quiet sigh. These liminal spaces alone used to inspire him, but lately he’s been so blocked that he can’t seem to find the right frame of mind to even contemplate working. At least half his gallery showing is already complete, and at least his gallery showing -- his second, but that seems to inspire more nerves in him than the first had, the first being surrounded with an air of surrealism that had helped him dissociate right on through it -- isn’t for several months.

He wants it to be over, already. All of it. He stops in front of a painting -- a still life, fancy water glasses and stacks of dishes, each painted perfectly, but on a slight slant, as if to distort the beauty of what is being presented. He wonders what angry housewife came up with this. He doesn’t disrespect said angry housewife, mind, he just wonders how in God’s name this is supposed to be helpful.

He is staring at the painting with absolutely no understanding of his own when he feels someone standing beside him. Hongbin slowly shifts his gaze off the seemingly endless stack of plates, cast in canvas and oil and mainly muted tones before him, to meet the face of the most beautiful man in the world, not that he can say as much out loud.

“What are you doing here?” Hongbin murmurs, tucking his hand into his pocket, then furling it in the hem of his t-shirt, then resting it on the top of his thigh, shaking a tiny bit all the while. He had not expected to be interrupted. He wonders if his intruder has been here the entire time, listening to him talk to the paintings, enduring him staring at everything, trying to make sense of at least something.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hongbin catches sight of Taekwoon’s bright smile, the slow and deliberate way he drags his hands through his bleach blond hair, one at a time, like he can even begin to pretend that he doesn’t know how utterly gorgeous he is. A fool. Hongbin is a fool for loving him. “I thought I would try and help,” he says, devoid of teasing, though Hongbin would also be a fool not to know when he’s being mocked at least a little bit. His process is a strange one, dramatically different than Taekwoon’s from what he’s learned in the past few weeks of them ‘casually’ spending time together. He doesn’t have the luxury of people-watching. He hasn’t been able to draw from that well, in all its infinite renewable resources, for ages. 

Perhaps he is a bit envious of Taekwoon, just for a fleeting second. The fact that he should be jealous of a fucking _writer_ upsets him more than Taekwoon’s presence, cutting into the middle of his sacred alone time.

“I don’t have to take this from you. Where did you even come from? I’m leaving. Please don’t follow me.” Hongbin grabs for his backpack, then remembers that he hadn’t been allowed to bring his backpack into this wing, and that it’s probably in Wonsik’s security office for safe keeping. That really kind of throws off his huff. Not that he’s got much huff to begin with, not when he turns to look Taekwoon in the eye and gets a tiny bit weak in the knees.

Taekwoon isn’t laughing, though, not when Hongbin reaches for something that isn’t there, or when he colours so bright a crimson that he swears his face is about to melt off. “You don’t, if you think I’m being mean. But I wasn’t trying to. I really wanted to help.”

Immediately, Hongbin softens. They...haven’t actually discussed respecting each other’s work times and workspaces. Have desecrated Hongbin’s painting studio a couple times, almost broke Taekwoon’s antique typewriter the other day in a frantic rush to undress. It might be his fault, for not establishing proper boundaries. He can’t bring himself to fault someone else for his own mistake. Plus, Taekwoon is wearing that stupid fucking tank top, the one he’d been wearing the first day they met, when Hakyeon had so unkindly shoved them together at some social gathering or another, a vague wave of his hand his only introduction. (To his credit, Hakyeon knows his friends very well, and if he had introduced either of them they’d never have said a word to one another, and Hakyeon would have filled in all the gaps. He’s smarter than he lets on, even if his clumsy thief in an art exhibit way of knocking things into one another to make them work looks messy beyond reason.)

Hongbin, still blushing, drags his palms over his face, shoves his deep-violet fringe out of his eyes. Taekwoon is bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting to be asked, and he’s so goddamn endearing that Hongbin can’t help but like it, make a soft noise of relenting of his very own. “How do you want to help?” he asks, and the question brings an even bigger shit-eating grin to Taekwoon’s face. 

“I want not to touch the artwork,” he says in his most plain of tones, even moreso than before, leaving Hongbin puzzled, at least for a moment, the both of them shifting foot to foot, Taekwoon out of enthusiasm and Hongbin out of mild anxiety. “Come here. Kiss me under this stupid painting of plates.”

“I-- what?” Hongbin blinks, shakes his head, still confused. “Is the artwork the artwork, or…” He prods himself in the chest, indicative.

“I mean, both,” and here Taekwoon’s got this ease about him that isn’t much like him at all. He tucks his hands behind his back, whistles out a couple notes, the very depiction of something failing at being innocuous. “Art is art. You’re art.”

With a roll of his eyes, Hongbin, finding himself endeared, slides into Taekwoon’s space, wrapping arms around his waist, trying not to lean against Taekwoon lest they knock into said painting and get banned from the museum for life. Their lips meet, a single, delicate brush stroke of Taekwoon’s mouth upon Hongbin’s. At least, at first. But like all their meetings before, Hongbin needs more, nips at the swell of Taekwoon’s lower lip just to earn that sound of approval rumbling in his chest. 

This -- the Alice blue of his spirit running hot like his blood, melting and swirling into Taekwoon’s carmine, combining to make the nearly lilac Hongbin finds loveliest -- could be inspiring enough for lifetimes, for entire cities of artists. When Taekwoon’s hands tangle in his hair, forcing his head back and his neck exposed, Hongbin can almost see the pale of Taekwoon’s slim fingers against the magenta he’d carefully chosen for himself on a whim two weeks ago. That alone is a sweeping vision.

When they part, Taekwoon keeping his distance save the hand that had twined in Hongbin’s hair, which has now found his nape and is thumbing over one of the nobs of his spine, they are breathless, and Taekwoon’s lips are the exact same shade as summer-ripe strawberries, and Hongbin can’t think of anywhere he wants to be less than this stuffy, stifling museum. He wants to be in the sunlight of Taekwoon’s bright smile, in the cloud-grey silhouette of his chest as it rises and falls, as Taekwoon stutters to so much as sip at the stale air in this endless, empty, echoing hallway.

Empty, it seems, is a relative term.

From behind them, Hongbin hears someone clear their throat, and curses under his breath. He turns so slowly he isn’t sure he hasn’t turned to stone under the gaze of an unseen gargoyle. “Wonsik,” he says, all forced cheer and staring at the floor. “I thought you were done here.”

Wonsik is eating a sandwich; the food in his mouth puffs out his cheeks. He is the opposite of any of the artworks in this place. Hongbin hates and admires it. “The new guy is running late.” A piece of roast beef nearly comes out of his mouth. “I’m supposed to call the head of security if I catch anyone necking. That’s like...day one of training. You’d get kicked out.”

“You didn’t catch us doing anything,” Taekwoon points out, all airy and smiling, conspiracy clear in his voice. “We’re not doing anything. And we’re leaving.”

Wonsik shrugs. “Cool. Means I don’t have to chase you guys out of here.” He continues eating his sandwich, gestures that they should go somewhere else, leave him to his lunch in peace. “I’ll bring your backpack to your place later, Bin.” Hongbin nods his gratitude, unable to say much else.

Taekwoon takes Hongbin’s hand in his, leads the both of them down the endless, empty hallway, toward the entrances, past the gift shop, and when they are once again under the sun, her brilliant caress against both their faces, he kisses Hongbin again, leaving Hongbin amber, immobile and useless, unable to speak the protest that comes to mind. Regardless of the fact that he might be infatuated, he doesn’t want to be seen in public kissing anyone, but...when it’s Taekwoon, he supposes, it doesn’t feel near as bad as he’d always envisioned it might. 

“Should we go to your place?” Taekwoon asks, all breathless and animated, and if Hongbin hadn’t quite been captivated before, he certainly would be now.

“No, let’s go to yours,” he says, all coquettishness, thumb dragging over the outside of Taekwoon’s. He punctuates his sentence with a kiss to the center of Taekwoon’s forehead, blushing and cringing and wanting to die at the public affection even as he speaks. “I want to see where you pretend to sleep when you really want to write.”

**Author's Note:**

> for reference: [this](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/17/1382023274899/The-Perfect-Hostess-005.jpg?w=1010&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=b94adbd6871290968aa2c35d6911ca84) is the painting of dishes referenced, it's called 'the perfect hostess' by rebecca scott and was one of the first things that came up when i googled 'contemporary still lifes'  
> also tbh idk shit about art and googled more than a few of my colour terms so if i did anything wrong pls feel free to let me know  
> as always!!! come see how (un)productive i'm being on [twitter](http://twitter.com/takoyaken)


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